Florida Plane Crash Started Journey in Collin County

Texas Plane Crash - Plane accident Lawyer - Collin County wrongful death

Quality Powder Coating's president and a company pilot were aboard a small plane that crashed in the Gulf of Mexico near Florida on Wednesday afternoon, the Carrollton company said this morning.

The company identified two of the five people on the plane as president Roland Schurrer and pilot Steve Barrows. Two other people on board were believed to have been customers of the company that coats metal products.

"We have not received official confirmation from the NTSB regarding the status of those who were on the airplane," the company said. "Our thoughts and concerns continue to be focused on members of our company family who were on the airplane and the members of their respective families."

The U.S. Coast Guard searched with boats and helicopters about 20 miles west of Port Richey for the plane, which took off Wednesday morning from the McKinney airport. Late Wednesday night, searchers found a two-mile debris field.

“It was plane wreckage,” said Petty Officer Rob Simpson of the Coast Guard. “We haven’t been able to verify that it’s from that plane, but it was within the search area.”

The twin-engine Cessna aircraft is registered to Q4 Aviation, LLC, which shares a Carrollton address with Quality Powder Coating, according to public records.

A 33-year-old Dallas man who has a pilot’s license shares an address with one of the Quality Powder Coating officials, according to records. Reached by phone, a relative of the man asked that “you respect our privacy.”

Quality Powder spokesman Andy Brown said those on the plane were headed to a meeting in Florida for a couple of days.

The twin engine Cessna left from Collin County Regional Airport en route to Tampa about 10 a.m. The Federal Aviation Administration says air traffic controllers in Jacksonville lost radio and radar contact with the plane at 1:52 p.m. after it reported encountering turbulence.

Anthony Reynes, meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Ruskin, Fla., told the Tampa Tribune that a line of showers and thunderstorms was in the Gulf of Mexico at the time the plane dropped off the radar Wednesday afternoon.

J. Lynn Lunsford, an FAA spokesman, said that in the last radio contact, the pilot of the plane “reported heavy turbulence, loss of control and inverted flight.” The plane appeared to be flying at about 5,000 feet at that time.

Bad weather was reported in the area. Lunsford said the plane was flying in “IFR conditions,” which means that the pilot was relying on instruments.

Simpson, of the Coast Guard, said the search was “going to continue through the night.”